Foxing

Beneath the audible progress of Foxing's 13 year career - from the chamber emo of debut The Albatross to the art pop of 2021's Draw Down The Moon - has been a gradual movement towards self-sufficiency. Appropriately, the quartet of vocalist Conor Murphy, guitarist Eric Hudson, drummer Jon Hellwig, and bassist Brett Torrence (who recently joined after years as a touring hired gun) chose to self-title their fifth LP simply, Foxing. The album was entirely produced by the band and mixed by Hudson. The cover art was created by Murphy and Torrence, and it is being released on the band's own Grand Paradise label.

DIY requires doing, and Foxing was not an easy album to make. I share a studio space with the band and was an onlooker to the tedious two year process of its creation. I heard good songs emanating from their room at the bottom of the stairs, only to be abandoned and later reborn as incredible songs. I also witnessed some absolute garbage - a testament to the quartet's willingness to entertain any idea and push it to its furthest conclusion before filling their iMac's recycling bin. I was jarred by explosive cheering as the band turned the basement hallway into a makeshift putting green during breaks. I overheard arguments that were decibels shy of shouting matches. There were some moments when their creative stalemates seemed unresolvable and others where the enthusiasm of making a transcendently great album was intoxicating.

It is fitting that tension is at the core of Foxing, an album that balances hopefulness and nihilism, the pastoral with the tumultuous. Whether oscillating between visceral noise rock and intimate bedroom cassette experiments on opener "Secret History" or cruising at the edge of collapse on "Barking," the dramatic dynamics that have long permeated Foxing's music have never felt so extreme. Five albums into a discography defined by its own restlessness, Foxing is a document of a band finding comfort in their own chaos.

[Ryan Wasoba]